At the time of writing, the General Debate, which draws to a close this coming Thursday 30 September, was lumbering towards its halfway point.

The Assembly has, however, already heard from many of the most prominent Latin American leaders.  On Wednesday, Dilma Rousseff became the first woman to open the General Debate, following in the footsteps of 65 male predecessors.

But the significance of the Brazilian president’s speech was far from the minds of most commentators.  Some chose to ignore it altogether.  ‘Barack Obama opens annual UN session amid plan to avoid showdown on Palestinian statehood’, London’s Guardian informed the readers of its live blog.

Palestine and Latin America: (almost) a unifying topic

There was, quite simply, only one story in town this week.  As El Tiempo hardly needed to put it, the question of Palestinian statehood has ‘monopolised’ proceedings.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas defied Obama and his Israeli counterpart, Binyamin Netanyahu, by handing a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday formally requesting full member status of the organisation for his nation.

Pulsamérica has over the past 12 months followed the progress of Palestine in its attempt to gain recognition as an independent state from Latin American countries, efforts which have yielded significant fruit.

Indeed, the issue featured in many of the speeches made by the region’s leaders.  Rousseff herself led the way [pdf].  ‘Like the majority of the countries in this Assembly’, she said, ‘we believe that the time has come for Palestine to be fully represented here.  The recognition of the Palestinian people’s legitimate right to sovereignty and self‑determination increases the possibilities for a lasting peace in the Middle East’.

Rousseff’s Argentinean counterpart, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, expressed similar sentiments, and was followed in voicing support for Palestine by Presidents Porfirio Lobo, Fernando Lugo, Evo Morales, Sebastián Piñera, Ollanta Humala and Mauricio Funes of Honduras, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Peru and El Salvador respectively.

It is generally accepted that a comfortable majority of General Assembly members are in favour of Palestine’s admittance as a full member.  That institution, however, only has the power to grant observer status; anything more substantial must be conferred by the Security Council of just 15 countries.

Two Latin American states are currently among those 15.  Rousseff’s Brazil is one; the other, significantly, is Colombia.

Urging Israel and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table [pdf], President Juan Manuel Santos called this ‘the only – I repeat the only – path that would lead to where we all want to be: two states living in peace and security’.

In a leader article this week, El Tiempo argued that, by adopting the approach they have at the UN, ‘the Palestinians risk throwing away almost two decades of peace talks with Israel’.  This is a view that the Colombian government apparently shares.  The same newspaper reported Foreign Minister María Ángela Holguín’s announcement that Colombia will abstain from any Security Council vote on the matter.

Think again, Mr Santos

That Abbas’s move was taken out of frustration at the lack of progress achieved by peace negotiations – ‘enough, enough, enough’, he told the Assembly – might be seen as ironic in the context of the theme of this year’s debate, ‘the role of mediation in the settlement of disputes by peaceful means’.

From an alternative perspective, however, Abbas’s plea carried a cautionary tale: a warning about the role of third parties in such circumstances.  Official recognition of a state of Palestine is clearly not seen as an alternative to peace negotiations by Abbas.  It is rather a means of placing the two parties on an equal footing, while simultaneously strengthening the hand of the moderate and more peace‑minded Palestinian faction.

That the United States can once again be seen standing at Israel’s shoulder in the face of strong international opinion is merely the latest demonstration of what should be obvious to anyone involved: it is entirely unsuited to the role of mediator.

Looking beyond the rhetorical exchanges over Palestine this week, it becomes clear that this was in fact only one of a host of conflicts raised by speakers in the debate.  While some leaders baldly eschewed the spirit of the theme – Kirchner’s talks with Piñera over halting flights between the Falkland Islands and Chile in an attempt to ramp up Argentina’s conflict with the UK being a good example – others recounted genuinely constructive experiences.

Prominent among these was none other than President Santos.  As he pointed out during his address, not only has he mended bilateral ties with neighbouring Venezuela and Ecuador during his short time in office, but he has also formed an unlikely partnership with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to successfully engineer Honduras’s return to the regional fold.

Over the past decade, observers of Latin America have become accustomed to seeing Colombia standing alongside the United States on issues of foreign policy, isolated from the rest of the region.  However, we have seen enough after a year of the Santos presidency to surmise that his stance on Palestine is unlikely to have been adopted out of purely strategic self‑interest.

Nevertheless, his commendable record is sadly undermined by this misguided position.  To cite another cliché, there is more than one way to skin a cat; in conflict resolution, context is vital.

The current approach in Palestine has failed.  Take another look, Mr Santos, and help force the US into wielding that veto.